


Strings Attached

by ivoryandhorn



Category: Naruto, Warcraft
Genre: 100-1000 Words, Community: no_true_pair, Crossover, Gen, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-01
Updated: 2009-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-04 17:32:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivoryandhorn/pseuds/ivoryandhorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Benevolent is not his middle name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strings Attached

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: _Uchiha Itachi and Arthas Menethil: an unexpected act of kindness_
> 
> And by "Arthas" I mean "Lich King", which should give you a pretty good indicator of how kind his act really is.

Itachi opened his eyes. His limbs felt stiff and cold. Unsurprising, considering he was fairly sure he had died. He tried to sit up and was stopped by a hand on his chest, belonging to a man in the heaviest armor he had ever seen in his life.

"Who…" The words were sluggish in his brain, on his tongue. "What…happened?"

"I am the Lich King. You, Itachi Uchiha, died. I brought you back." The man stepped back and Itachi finally managed to bring himself upright: slowly, carefully, no struggling to betray anything other than ordinary weariness. Dried blood still caked his hands and no doubt his face, though the skin he could see was, surprisingly, tinged faintly blue. His flesh felt cold as the ice that made up the walls of the cavern around him.

"Where…is this?"

"Azeroth," the armored man replied. Itachi could read nothing in his voice or body. His eyes were ice blue, glowing faintly in the dim sunlight filtering through the ice.

"You transported my corpse from another continent…simply to raise me from the dead?" he asked slowly. He'd known that the far continents had strange beliefs about chakra, and that their ways of using it were stranger still, but teleportation and resurrection of the freshly dead seemed somewhat beyond the bounds of rumors and tall tales.

"Eyes such as yours shouldn't be wasted on worms," the Lich King said.

Which implied he wanted Itachi to use them. "You have no guarantee I will do anything for you."

The man gazed at him, and smiled. Itachi suppressed the sudden and very strong urge to set this man afire: he recognized that look, and it was no more pleasant from a virtual stranger than from his ancestor. Now that he—and more importantly, Sasuke—was free of Madara, he saw no reason to tolerate it any longer. Only uncertainty of his current strength stayed his hand.

"Your brother has currently joined the Akatsuki under Madara's command," the Lich King said casually. "I believe he's helping him catch the last of the tailed beasts. And to invade your precious village."

Itachi processed this information slowly, hating himself for what he was about to say. He hadn't wished to die by any stretch of the imagination, but he _had_ been anticipating the freedom of never having to bow to any authority other than his own again. He would not be freed from that particular yoke even in death, it seemed.

"Now, I _could_ simply snap your will like a twig and bend you to my every command, but I rather suspect that like most mages, your powers are too subtle to work well beneath dampened consciousness," the man continued blithely. He had begun pacing; Itachi followed his progress with dull eyes. "And so, allow me to extend to you an offer I extend to few others: I will kill Madara for you and allow you to speak with your brother one more time. In exchange, you will serve me for the rest of your unnatural existence." He stopped dead before him, his smile still in place.

Itachi was tired of following men too arrogant to see their downfall, but he could not fail to keep Madara away from his brother. Considering he no longer had death to free him from any sort of servitude, he might end up serving this Lich King for the rest of eternity—a profoundly unpalatable prospect. And yet…he had worked so hard to loosen Madara's hold on his brother, he could not let this state of affairs be now that he was once more alive enough to taste the bitterness of failure. Once he was assured Sasuke was safe, he decided. As long as he knew his brother was free of Madara, as free of their clan's ugliest sins as it was possible to be…

"I accept those terms."

…then, he would find his own freedom.


End file.
